Articles on Primal Therapy, psychogenesis, causes of psychological traumas, brain development, psychotherapies, neuropsychology, neuropsychotherapy. Discussions about causes of anxiety, depression, psychosis, consequences of the birth trauma and life before birth.

Friday, November 18, 2016

The Elusive Truth

I often write that the simple truth is revolutionary. But where is that truth? How do we recognize it when we find it? It is often not a truth we seek out; it is a truth that hits us from inside. A truth that can rattle our bones and can alter our thinking. I will often an example from my life.
I have been trying to have an MRI for a long time but I cannot make it. When I undergo the scan it seems likely my whole birth history arrives intact. And I fall into an anxiety state that is as spooky as anything I have ever undergone. It is not anxiety; it is terror of approaching death. So why is that? Because we carry it around all of the time, and when the circumstances are right it can be triggered again, especially when your head is not allowed to move, one cannot see out and breathing is more and more difficult as Primal suffocation raises its head. The baby feels all that and is in pure terror with no help, no one to ease the pain and no one to explain.

It takes place on the deepest levels of the brain where no concepts for understanding exist. And it leaves a trace, a methyl trace (called methylation). That marks the spot and indicates how painful it was and is. It agitates us so that we cannot think clearly and concentrate. We have to keep moving. I call it an “imprint” and it stays embedded in the brain and affects our anatomy, biology and neurology. It later drives our adult behavior and symptoms. If we do not recognize this we are doomed to not understand any of this; nor the origins of our compulsive behavior and recurring symptoms.
Our lives remain a mystery.

Anthony Weiner had an imprint that drove him to act out in exhibitionism. Once the imprint was there the act-out had to return in force and it did. No different from a severe physical symptom; once treated it remains a danger for years to come. It is an ineluctable force from which there is no escape. We cannot run from the imprint; it is part of us. On the contrary, we must run toward it, experience it and then be done with it. It has been part of our lives; only now it must be part of our conscious lives. My belief is that the earlier and more powerful the imprint the more like it will dog us for a long time. It is that recurring nightmare with the same demon chasing us. I know, I owned one for years. It never let me be free. I was living in a nightmare and never knew, but my whole system knew it well and expressed itself every night in those nightmares. How did I find their origins? When I travelled deep in the brain to where those deep imprints lay. I relived all the origins and my terrors disappeared. They were allowed to rise above the gating system to be faced head on, and I do mean “head on”. I then knew immediately why I had to sit in a restaurant with nothing over my head. I had to drive a convertible for the same reason; and that reason was so arcane as to remain unbelievable . When patients started to tell me, “It feels like I am living my birth.” I told them, “Enough of that nonsense, let’s stay rational and away from booga booga explanations. That means “I” the discoverer of this whole process, did not believe in the most important part of it, until, the evidence became overwhelming. So I fully understand when it is poo-pooed and scoffed at by others. If we do not believe in the imprint there is no way whatsoever to understand mental illness. Imprints are the safe haven for the secrets of the unconscious.

17 comments:

Im surprised that after all this time you would still have to avoid MRI ? It is a freaky thought though to be stuck inside a machine with no control over it. They should have a safety switch the patient can reach if they start to panic. I'm sure it would prevent a lot of anxiety.

I know how infuriating it can be to have someone who knows little make suggestions from their position of ignorance; but I wonder if your throat is all the worse for the birth trauma you went through? There can only be so much physical healing from that anyway - any serious interference to the throat / chest structure etc is likely to leave a trace, no matter how much Primal pain you have relived & integrated. I have been in the throes of some kind of chest / throat / nose infection for three months now. My 'allergen immune cells' are very high in the blood tests I had. I'm sure it's more than coincidence that I'm having 'waking apnea / deep breathing' episodes lasting up to two hours. Which came first? The fungal spore irritation from the leaf mold I inhaled OR the chain of pain I was already & inexorably sliding down into 1st line symptoms (also triggering an immune reaction). I'm suggesting it's resonance down PLUS my old damage/weakness caused by blocked trachea / suffocation during birth - I sense (but have not yet relived) that a doctor/midwife had to force hir fingers down my throat to clear it out due to me being born completely zonked on painkillers. I also sense I was given heavy chest massage to get me breathing again.

Maybe I'm a bit muddled and mixing up my experiences with yours; but everything I'm experiencing fits into your Primal Theory like a glove - and in sequence too.

It seems more than ironic (and very unfair) that the one Doctor who has the most to say about the human condition (& particularly regarding suffocation / oxygen starvation / blocked trachea & throat at birth) is himself chronically suffering from a botched throat job and consequently doesn't have the voice to speak. I know what it's like to be 'gagged'. That can happen in later life in many different ways for many different reasons; the world mostly ignores or tells enlightened souls like you to shut up anyway.

I hope things improve for you. By the way I tried a variety of alternative remedies and discovered some that helped boost my immune system. 'Wellness Formula' by 'Bio ALIGN' really helps me a lot, not cured but definitely 'boosted'.

Art, does the "hot" throat bother you to talk only or is it a problem with general primal perinatal and later) expression? Does it block you to fully feel? A trigger and a double-bind? A “but” situation. There is a way out of this womb “BUT” …. Yes you can cry ”but”… Now you are adult and it is safe “but” this hot throat… Yes you can heal it “but” only if you don’t use it... keep being soft... and not too aggressive... but it is not easy!?

The average person, the one that didn't have a birth trauma, just doesn't understand. Think we are phonies, playing games. To get better is a constant goal, almost futile. I'm not saying I'm sick, but I do believe that fear can make one feel somewhat now right; almost like a temporary seizure. I told a person at the gym that I feel sick if I am not able to go. It's like one , after awhile feels the "mood" the "routine" of the boring work process (if one's work is absolutely boring to them....and I find that even dealing with the obnoxious kids boring) one must move about , break out of that "mold of a mood" for a while in order to do better. Life is hard as it is....and people can make it that way. When one has sincere fears, it can just be worse...but many people just don't understand. Overcome with fear, can hurt. People think it is a joke and funny...and here the person may be really suffering. They can't see it; especially when the person never appears afraid (always appears to have strength). It's like if one "breaks down"....not good for them, and they know it. They all say "unity" is the best way...why are they so afraid of loners, why is it such a sin? Many loners are totally harmless. Oh..so and so got something, so I have to get it also ....(but really "how do you feel"....we are individuals.)

It is surprising that you have not been able to demonstrate this phenomenon! Or? What happens scientifically about showing your reactions and what you are experiencing?

It looks as being what science needs to show the physiological reaction, it about what happens in our brain when we are exposed to magnetic influences which can open channels to what is unconsciously within us!?

In a way, very interesting considering those who want to know more about themselves, all of those professional who claims to know everything. What are they saying?

Art! I really hope that you do not have to suffer more than what is necessary of your injury in your throat!

The more I think about what you told us about MRI it becomes more and more of an interest... an interest for what it could be an crucial factor to prove science in its process of primal therapy... it to be spread around the established society for determination around what science should be about or not!? Not least to puncture the bubble around ETC... medications and cognitive therapies!

You probably have a lot going on around this phenomenon, but the more people that are involved and know about it the better it will get... the greater the spread! I knew nothing about this!

What if I would have known to be small when I throughout my life been there but with a tortured "soul" for not having dared to be there... not to have managed it since it was so painful for what loneliness into the death was. It is to be the Frank I am... as I have to experience if I am not going to die early of the suites from it.

No one could ever tell me the truth. I was waiting sooo long to discover your books. I just wanted to have my own history and people all around me fooled me. I just wanted to telll to someone that I hurt a lot. Few times I've almost lost my life. They always forbid what I say.

Review of "Beyond Belief"

This thought-provoking and important book shows how people are drawn toward dangerous beliefs.

“Belief can manifest itself in world-changing ways—and did, in some of history’s ugliest moments, from the rise of Adolf Hitler to the Jonestown mass suicide in 1979. Arthur Janov, a renowned psychologist who penned The Primal Scream, fearlessly tackles the subject of why and how strong believers willingly embrace even the most deranged leaders.

Beyond Belief begins with a lucid explanation of belief systems that, writes Janov, “are maps, something to help us navigate through life more effectively.” While belief systems are not presented as inherently bad, the author concentrates not just on why people adopt belief systems, but why “alienated individuals” in particular seek out “belief systems on the fringes.” The result is a book that is both illuminating and sobering. It explores, for example, how a strongly-held belief can lead radical Islamist jihadists to murder others in suicide acts. Janov writes, “I believe if people had more love in this life, they would not be so anxious to end it in favor of some imaginary existence.”

One of the most compelling aspects of Beyond Belief is the author’s liberal use of case studies, most of which are related in the first person by individuals whose lives were dramatically affected by their involvement in cults. These stories offer an exceptional perspective on the manner in which belief systems can take hold and shape one’s experiences. Joan’s tale, for instance, both engaging and disturbing, describes what it was like to join the Hare Krishnas. Even though she left the sect, observing that participants “are stunted in spiritual awareness,” Joan considers returning someday because “there’s a certain protection there.”

Janov’s great insight into cultish leaders is particularly interesting; he believes such people have had childhoods in which they were “rejected and unloved,” because “only unloved people want to become the wise man or woman (although it is usually male) imparting words of wisdom to others.” This is just one reason why Beyond Belief is such a thought-provoking, important book.”

Barry Silverstein, Freelance Writer

Quotes for "Life Before Birth"

“Life Before Birth is a thrilling journey of discovery, a real joy to read. Janov writes like no one else on the human mind—engaging, brilliant, passionate, and honest.

He is the best writer today on what makes us human—he shows us how the mind works, how it goes wrong, and how to put it right . . . He presents a brand-new approach to dealing with depression, emotional pain, anxiety, and addiction.”

Paul Thompson, PhD, Professor of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine

Art Janov, one of the pioneers of fetal and early infant experiences and future mental health issues, offers a robust vision of how the earliest traumas of life can percolate through the brains, minds and lives of individuals. He focuses on both the shifting tides of brain emotional systems and the life-long consequences that can result, as well as the novel interventions, and clinical understanding, that need to be implemented in order to bring about the brain-mind changes that can restore affective equanimity. The transitions from feelings of persistent affective turmoil to psychological wholeness, requires both an understanding of the brain changes and a therapist that can work with the affective mind at primary-process levels. Life Before Birth, is a manifesto that provides a robust argument for increasing attention to the neuro-mental lives of fetuses and infants, and the widespread ramifications on mental health if we do not. Without an accurate developmental history of troubled minds, coordinated with a recognition of the primal emotional powers of the lowest ancestral regions of the human brain, therapists will be lost in their attempt to restore psychological balance.

Jaak Panksepp, Ph.D.

Bailey Endowed Chair of Animal Well Being Science

Washington State University

Dr. Janov’s essential insight—that our earliest experiences strongly influence later well being—is no longer in doubt. Thanks to advances in neuroscience, immunology, and epigenetics, we can now see some of the mechanisms of action at the heart of these developmental processes. His long-held belief that the brain, human development, and psychological well being need to studied in the context of evolution—from the brainstem up—now lies at the heart of the integration of neuroscience and psychotherapy.

Grounded in these two principles, Dr. Janov continues to explore the lifelong impact of prenatal, birth, and early experiences on our brains and minds. Simultaneously “old school” and revolutionary, he synthesizes traditional psychodynamic theories with cutting-edge science while consistently highlighting the limitations of a strict, “top-down” talking cure. Whether or not you agree with his philosophical assumptions, therapeutic practices, or theoretical conclusions, I promise you an interesting and thought-provoking journey.

Lou Cozolino, PsyD, Professor of Psychology, Pepperdine University

In Life Before Birth Dr. Arthur Janov illuminates the sources of much that happens during life after birth. Lucidly, the pioneer of primal therapy provides the scientific rationale for treatments that take us through our original, non-verbal memories—to essential depths of experience that the superficial cognitive-behavioral modalities currently in fashion cannot possibly touch, let alone transform.

Gabor Maté MD, author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction

An expansive analysis! This book attempts to explain the impact of critical developmental windows in the past, implores us to improve the lives of pregnant women in the present, and has implications for understanding our children, ourselves, and our collective future. I’m not sure whether primal therapy works or not, but it certainly deserves systematic testing in well-designed, assessor-blinded, randomized controlled clinical trials.

A baby's brain grows more while in the womb than at any time in a child's life. Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script That Rules Our Lives is a valuable guide to creating healthier babies and offers insight into healing our early primal wounds. Dr. Janov integrates the most recent scientific research about prenatal development with the psychobiological reality that these early experiences do cast a long shadow over our entire lifespan. With a wealth of experience and a history of successful psychotherapeutic treatment, Dr. Janov is well positioned to speak with clarity and precision on a topic that remains critically important.

Dr. Janov has crafted a compelling and prophetic opus that could rightly dictate

PhD thesis topics for decades to come. Devoid of any "New Age" pseudoscience,

this work never strays from scientific orthodoxy and yet is perfectly accessible and

downright fascinating to any lay person interested in the mysteries of the human psyche."

Dr. Bernard Park, MD, MPH

His new book “Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script that Rules Our Lives” shows that primal therapy, the lower-brain therapeutic method popularized in the 1970’s international bestseller “Primal Scream” and his early work with John Lennon, may help alleviate depression and anxiety disorders, normalize blood pressure and serotonin levels, and improve the functioning of the immune system.

One of the book’s most intriguing theories is that fetal imprinting, an evolutionary strategy to prepare children to cope with life, establishes a permanent set-point in a child's physiology. Baby's born to mothers highly anxious during pregnancy, whether from war, natural disasters, failed marriages, or other stressful life conditions, may thus be prone to mental illness and brain dysfunction later in life. Early traumatic events such as low oxygen at birth, painkillers and antidepressants administered to the mother during pregnancy, poor maternal nutrition, and a lack of parental affection in the first years of life may compound the effect.

In making the case for a brand-new, unified field theory of psychotherapy, Dr. Janov weaves together the evolutionary theories of Jean Baptiste Larmarck, the fetal development studies of Vivette Glover and K.J.S. Anand, and fascinating new research by the psychiatrist Elissa Epel suggesting that telomeres—a region of repetitive DNA critical in predicting life expectancy—may be significantly altered during pregnancy.

After explaining how hormonal and neurologic processes in the womb provide a blueprint for later mental illness and disease, Dr. Janov charts a revolutionary new course for psychotherapy. He provides a sharp critique of cognitive behavioral therapy, psychoanalysis, and other popular “talk therapy” models for treating addiction and mental illness, which he argues do not reach the limbic system and brainstem, where the effects of early trauma are registered in the nervous system.

“Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script that Rules Our Lives” is scheduled to be published by NTI Upstream in October 2011, and has tremendous implications for the future of modern psychology, pediatrics, pregnancy, and women’s health.

Editor

Legacy Program

Learn Primal theory and clinical practice: the Legacy Program is now available!

Beyond Belief

Released in May 2016!

Dr. Arthur Janov examines the power of beliefs and how they are used as a mechanism for dealing with early trauma that goes as far back as birth. Beliefs are a way to rationalize with pain rooted deep in the unconscious, and reveal that love is a biological need. Dr. Janov applies engrossing case studies and his many years of experience to bring the reader one step closer to understanding human behavior, and how pain can become converted into an idea.

Lecture videos about Primal Therapy

Life Before Birth

Life Before Birth was 1st Runner-up of the 2012 Eric Hoffer Book Award in the Health category:

"This examines behavioral markers before adolescence and childhood, all the way back to gestation. Presenting case studies and trenchant research, Janov posits that much of the adult maladies affecting so many, such as anxiety, addiction, and ADHD, have roots in fetal biochemistry. His analysis offers hope for those concerned about passing on many perceive as hereditary conditions that might actually be prevented with a healthy lifestyle before and during pregnancy. Janov breaks down complex scientific and health-related ideas into accessible, relatable language. Life Before Birth provides a unique guidebook for parents-to-be and an interesting set of ideas for everyone."This is Dr. Janov’s opus magnum, a revolutionary work in every sense of the word. It may help to change the practice of psychotherapy as we know it, and above it, how we give birth today; the shoulds and should nots. It explains in detail how early trauma and adversity can have lifelong consequences and result in serious afflictions from cancer to diabetes. It can have monumental implications for medical practice, as well, and points to how we can rear healthy children.

Sex and the Subconscious

Here Dr Janov explores how trauma and lack of love stand in the way of millions of people as they try and experience sexual pleasure in life. "It is my impression that once we take a symptom - a sex problem - as THE problem and attempt to treat it as apart from the rest of us, we have a prescription for failure. Sex is embedded into our bodies and our physiology; it has to seen in context not as some alien event to be done to. Even the most recalcitrant sex problems can be well treated once we learn their historical origins. They are not really mysteries Having treated so many sex problems I now want to share what I have learned with you."

Books by Dr. Janov

The Janov Solution(Aug 2007) indicates that is almost impossible to eradicate deep depression without plunging into the depths of the unconscious where the basis of it all lies. Dr. Janov has found a way to investigate the deep brain system that provides the underpinnings of depression. He has a system to eradicate the pernicious imprinted memories that cause us to be helpless and hopeless in adult life.

Primal Healing(Oct 2006) is Dr. Janov's magnum opus, the culmination of decades of clinical observation and research. Here he melds current research in biology and neurology with his clinical work to produce a definitive thesis regarding how any psychotherapy that uses words as the predominant mode of therapy cannot make profound change.

The Biology of love (Mar 2000) Drawing on years of experience with thousands of patients and a growing body of evidence in neurophysiology, human biology and psychology, Dr. Janov shows how love or the lack of it affects not only our sense of psychological well-being but our physical health and our personalities as well.

Why You Get Sick - How You Get Well (Aug 1996) The culmination of over a decade of research and writing, Why You Get Sick - How You Get Well reveals the hidden forces of the unconscious that conspire against the human system, making us sick emotionally and physically.